The Time Capsule and the Cut Up: Negotiating Temporality, Anticipating Catastrophe

The first feature film made about the design and deployment of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End (1947), begins with fake newsreel footage depicting the burial in a time capsule of a copy of the film and a projector to show it on. The scene, with its funereal overtones yet grim optimism that, even in the face of catastrophic destruction, the germ of civilisation will endure, recalls the ceremonies surrounding the interment of the Westinghouse time capsule at the New York World's Fair in 1939. Time capsules, this article argues, stand in a complex relation to war and temporality, seeking to at once anticipate and work through the challenge posed to futurity by the threat of global conflict. As a container, the capsule attempts to deliver and control the reception of a legible inventory of the present, yet the principle of selection and the impossibility of predicting how information might be received in the deep future – if it is received at all – threatens this aim. The dilemma faced by time capsule curators is, we argue with reference to William Burroughs' and Brion Gysin's so-called cut -up method of writing, one of control. By reading the time capsule through the cut-up, anticipated catastrophe can be seen to be functioning proleptically in the present and already active as a challenge to the capsule as proof against disaster

Solar Energetic Particle Events in the 23rd Solar Cycle: Interplanetary Magnetic Field Configuration and Statistical Relationship with Flares and CMEs

We study the influence of the large-scale interplanetary magnetic field configuration on the solar energetic particles (SEPs) as detected at different satellites near Earth and on the correlation of their peak intensities with the parent solar activity. We selected SEP events associated with X and M-class flares at western longitudes, in order to ensure good magnetic connection to Earth. These events were classified into two categories according to the global interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) configuration present during the SEP propagation to 1AU: standard solar wind or interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). Our analysis shows that around 20% of all particle events are detected when the spacecraft is immersed in an ICME. The correlation of the peak particle intensity with the projected speed of the SEP-associated coronal mass ejection is similar in the two IMF categories of proton and electron events, $\approx 0.6$. The SEP events within ICMEs show stronger correlation between the peak proton intensity and the soft X-ray flux of the associated solar flare, with correlation coefficient $r=\,$0.67$\pm$0.13, compared to the SEP events propagating in the standard solar wind, $r=\,$0.36$\pm$0.13. The difference is more pronounced for near-relativistic electrons. The main reason for the different correlation behavior seems to be the larger spread of the flare longitude in the SEP sample detected in the solar wind as compared to SEP events within ICMEs. We discuss to which extent observational bias, different physical processes (particle injection, transport, etc.), and the IMF configuration can influence the relationship between SEPs and coronal activity.Comment: http://adsabs.harvard.edu.ezproxy.obspm.fr/abs/2013SoPh..282..579

Our research: a fragment on fragments

A text describing, articulating, evoking the procedural principles of the Five Years project, at least in a fragmentary manner... romantically

Simultaneous interplanetary scintillation and Heliospheric Imager observations of a coronal mass ejection

We describe simultaneous Interplanetary Scintillation (IPS) and STEREO Heliospheric Imager (HI) observations of a coronal mass ejection (CME) on 16 May 2007. Strong CME signatures were present throughout the IPS observation. The IPS raypath lay within the field-of-view of HI-1 on STEREO-A and comparison of the observations shows that the IPS measurements came from a region within a faint CME front observed by HI-1A. This front may represent the merging of two converging CMEs. Plane-of-sky velocity estimates based on time-height plots of the two converging CME structures were 325 kms?1 and 550 kms?1 for the leading and trailing fronts respectively. The plane-of-sky velocities determined from IPS ranged from 420 ± 10 kms?1 to 520 ± 20 kms?1. IPS results reveal the presence of micro-structure within the CME front which may represent interaction between the two separate CME events. This is the first time that it has been possible to interpret IPS observations of small-scale structure within an interplanetary CME in terms of the global structure of the event

First-Principles Calculation of Born Effective Charges and Spontaneous Polarization of Ferroelectric Bismuth Titanate

In this study, we present the results of our first-principles calculations of the band structure, density of states and the Born effective charge tensors for the ferroelectric (ground state B1a1) and paraelectric (I4/mmm) phases of bismuth titanate. The calculations are done using the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) as well as the local density approximation (LDA) of the density functional theory. In contrast to the literature, our calculations on B1a1 structure using GGA and LDA yield smaller indirect band gaps as compared to the direct band gaps, in agreement with the experimental data. The density of states shows considerable hybridization among Ti 3d, Bi 6p and O 2p states indicating covalent nature of the bonds leading to the ferroelectric instability. The Born effective charge tensors of the constituent ions for the ground state (B1a1) and paraelectric (I4/mmm) structures were calculated using the Berry phase method. This is followed by the calculation of the spontaneous polarization for the ferroelectric B1a1 phase using the Born effective charge tensors of the individual ions. The calculated value for the spontaneous polarization of ferroelectric bismuth titanate using different Born effective charges was found to be in the range of 55+/-13 $\mu$C/cm2 in comparison to the reported experimental value of (50+/-10 $\mu$C/cm2) for single crystals. The origin of ferroelectricity is attributed to the relatively large displacements of those oxygen ions in the TiO6 octahedra that lie along the a-axis of the bismuth titanate crystal.Comment: 36 pages, 5 figure

Self-portrait with Burned Weapon:The wound that does not heal

Inevitably, in one sense at least, early work arrives late. For it gains its particular meaning and status only when we are directed to it by subsequent “mature” productions, which, by forming an interpretative context for what has come before, place demands upon it. Typically, the “early” is examined for intimations of what will emerge and given importance insofar as it displays these. Indeed, it is difficult to see how work that showed no discernible connections of this kind could be described as “early” at all. Approaches of this sort are implicitly teleological – the value of early work is established on its documentation of the development of the artist who is bound to arise; it is juvenilia whose unnecessary features will wither away to release the work into what it had to become. But this is not the only way to think. Another would be to set aside organic metaphors of growth and maturation, and look instead for a differential pattern of potentials and possibilities that, while sharing affinities, do not imply a single, inevitable future. This allows us to attend to early work in a different way, opening questions of what it did not – or even “failed to” – become. The title of an early drawing series, Lost and Found (1973), which Lebbeus Woods partially reprised many years later on his online blog, hints at something like this – a more discontinuous process of losing and finding (actions neither arbitrary nor unmotivated, this further complicating the relations between “early” and “late”). Of it, he wrote: “What is interesting – and a little frightening – is that the basic forms and ideas were there from the beginning.” The aim of this article is to explore some manifestations of the early work of Lebbeus Woods, trying to draw out aspects of the architect’s thought that were – to me, at least – unexpected and different in kind from the usual narratives given. My sources are a limited number of the “black notebooks” that Woods kept in the 1970s. The notebook as an object, an object that was also an idea, clearly held a special meaning for him. Tied to his longstanding sense of itinerancy, the notebooks are portable and mobile, while also offering, as he later said, a home and space of safety. Their regular 11”x 14” format provides a constant that survives the frequently changing addresses written in their inner covers, the tension between the two reaching a height in the inscription for #16: “Lebbeus Woods &lt; No address at present &gt; Call collect (317) 255-7066 if found.” This seems as much a statement of principle or epigram as a declaration of fact. He assumes Xenon (Greek for “stranger”) as a persona, contemplates wandering “the great cities an outcast, a stranger to their multitudes”, and adopts the monogrammatic X – the mark that is the sign of the mark itself, the minimal index of an anonymous presence. Complex artefacts – spaces of drawing and delineation, and of the written elaboration of ideas – the notebooks also join a tradition of spiritual diaries, records of the interior struggles and self-exhortations of their author. In this, they are powerful instruments of auto-construction, in which the self is reflected, explores its identity, dwells on what it could become, but also confronts what it might not.<br/